The annual attack on the 14^th Amendment and birthright citizenship is underway. Jus soli is the granting of citizenship to anyone born within a country regardless of the citizenship of the parent. Those seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship claim that a misinterpretation of the 14^th Amendment has led to a plague of anchor babies. Each baby born adds to the off-shore flotilla of undocumented parents patiently bobbing in the waves waiting for their anchors to age. At 21, these anchor babies can legally file for their non-American parent(s) to join them in the United States.

More than a few state legislators have formed the dully dubbed State Legislators for Legal Immigration to promote illegal alien invasion prevention through state legislation. SLLI (sound it out) promotes itself with a logo of crosshairs centered somewhere near the point where Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado meet. Aside from the tackiness of the continuing use of such imagery following the Tuscon shooting and the resulting national conversation about Ms. Palin’s use of said imagery, SLLI has clearly marked a place with a convergence of illegal aliens. And where there are illegal aliens, anchor babies are sure to follow.

SLLI claims that “currently, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are crossing U.S. borders to give birth and exploit their child as an ‘anchor baby,’ as a means to obtain residency, access taxpayer-funded benefits and steal American jobs for themselves and for their families.”  A new Pew Research Center report disagrees. It finds that most parents of supposed anchor babies arrived more than two years prior to the birth of the baby. Unless illegal aliens have the gestation periods of elephants, most babies born to undocumented parents are nothing more or less than babies born to undocumented parents.

The Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee is considering two bills that would redefine Arizona state citizenship and seek Congressional permission to establish a system allowing states to issue one birth certificate to citizen babies and another birth certificate to those who do not have at least one parent who can prove they are a US citizen or legal permanent resident. Due to a lack of support, the progress of those bills is currently stalled. Unfortunately, thirty-nine other states have birthright related legislation pending. As does Congress thanks to Senators David Vitter and Rand Paul.

Anchor babies and their parents are not the cause of our weak economy or of foreclosures or of a decline in US stature.  Americans were able to manufacture that kind of success all on their own with greed and arrogance as the leading causes.  It is a mistake to tinker with an amendment designed to correct for this country’s failure to live up to its own declared self-evident truth – that all are created equal.  If those who seek to eliminate birthright citizenship are truly concerned about American exceptionalism, they should maintain an institution that truly is exceptional: jus soli. With the countries of the Americas as its main proponents, it truly is an American institution.